This morning I read a fascinating article about a certain thing that people did after the Super Bowl and I thought, “I have to write a piece about that!” It was so devilish and delicious that I started to compose the whole piece in my head.
Then I thought, “I am a teen writer now. I should expect that teens will be on my website and write accordingly. I should not write a post with a four-letter word in the title.”
And that made me sad.
Not that I’m sad that teens are coming to my blog more often… not at all! I love the emails I get from early readers, or teens looking forward to the book because they’ve read about it on Goodreads or Amazon. That’s amazing. What makes me sad is the thought that I need to edit myself. I am pretty open with my own teens and I wonder if I should hide this portion of myself from my teen readers. I wonder what that will mean for how vibrant and eclectic my posts will be going forward. But, also, I want to be responsible and post teen-appropriate things. This is actually the first time the thought has stopped me from writing something. I’m still not sure about the answer and I’m working it out.
So I’ll settle for this. If you’re over eighteen, I’ll ask you: what’s the first website you visited after you were done watching the Super Bowl? If you’re like a lot of Americans, it was the kind of website you normally only visit when you’re alone. Visits to these such websites spiked after the game was over, a fact that I find really funny. It reminds me that, at our core, we’re just beings looking for a little self-soothing. And I guess after a tough game, that self soothing requires a bit of help from a certain type of website.
Alas, I was not part of this trend. Although I could hear the halftime show fireworks from my house, I did not watch the Super Bowl, nor did I partake in the other kind of entertainment that was apparently enjoyed by much of the country afterward.
Okay, I can’t resist. Click here to read the article. It’s a funny study on human nature. Kids, ask mom or dad first. But probably mom. Or maybe dad? On second thought, it will totally creep you out to ask either of them, so just skip it. Let’s just all agree we’ll have this conversation when you’re older.